


“You Have Not Seen Such a Thing as This”: or, Malvolia Cross-Garter’d

by Telanu



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare, SHAKESPEARE William - Works, Twelfth Night - Shakespeare
Genre: Essays, F/F, Meta, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2019-05-10 06:29:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14731706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telanu/pseuds/Telanu
Summary: A critical look at a female Malvolia and her significance in the National Theatre's 2017 production ofTwelfth Night.





	“You Have Not Seen Such a Thing as This”: or, Malvolia Cross-Garter’d

**Author's Note:**

> This springs from a lot of thinking about Malvolia on my part, much of it informed by discussions I've had with various people over the past few weeks. Y'all know who you are, and you're brilliant. 
> 
> There is a link to the production on Youtube at the end of the essay, if you haven't seen it yet, or if you would like to refresh your memory before/after reading.

**“You Have Not Seen Such a Thing as This”: or, Malvolia Cross-Garter’d**

 

_“Tell us something of him.”_

Around 1601 or thereabouts, William Shakespeare wrote a play about concealment, deception, revenge, and insanity. That play is _Hamlet_. No, my mistake. That play is _Twelfth Night._

Fun fact: the first known “review” of _Twelfth Night_ was written by a law student named John Manningham in 1602 in his personal diary. Predictably, he enjoyed it. The play is jam-packed with aristocrats getting themselves in the usual wacky Elizabethan pitfalls that could be avoided if they communicated like adults. However, instead of the aristocratic characters’ romantic foibles, Manningham’s notes focus on the priggish, Puritanical steward of the house: Malvolio.

First, the requisite background information. _Twelfth Night_ takes place in Illyria, a place that seems narratively unmoored from the Balkan region conquered by the Romans in 168 BCE. Instead of troops, Shakespeare’s Illyria is overrun with people hellbent on overturning the social order. The story opens with a shipwreck and the separation of two twins, Viola and Sebastian, who bear such a close resemblance they are often mistaken for each other in spite of their sexes. On this reliable mistake the story hangs.

Viola and Sebastian are of “right noble blood.” This is going to be important in a second, so keep it in mind.

The twins get separated during the shipwreck. Viola is rescued from the sea by the ship’s captain while Sebastian appears to be swept away to his death, though he will later be pulled from the water by Antonio, captain of another ship. Viola goes to the Duke Orsino’s court disguised as a man, calls herself Cesario, and promptly falls in love with Orsino while acting as his servant. She’s got worse obstacles before her than her trousers: Orsino is enamored of someone else, the beautiful Countess Olivia.

Olivia’s not interested. Her father and brother have recently died, and “she hath abjur’d the company and sight of men.” However, when “Cesario” comes to call on behalf of Orsino, Olivia falls for “his” sweet talk like a sack of bricks, and poor Viola finds herself in the middle of one of the most famous love triangles in Western literature.

So much for upstairs. Now let’s head downstairs, where the action really gets good.

As a wealthy countess, Olivia has a pack of servants, most notably her faithful chambermaid Maria and her humorless steward Malvolio. Malvolio is perhaps the most notorious killjoy in Shakespeare, described by Maria as a “kind of Puritan” (historical irony alert: forty years later, Puritans would shut down England’s theaters). In one such scene, Malvolio upbraids Maria for a party that gets out of control, even though it’s not her fault; Maria vows to take revenge by making Malvolio, who prides himself on his sobriety and dignity, a “nayword” and a “common recreation” in front of Olivia, whom he fantasizes about marrying.

He doesn’t stand a chance, of course. Malvolio is a servant. When Olivia falls for “Cesario,” the first question she asks him is: “What is your parentage?” Even though her attraction to the youth overwhelms her, she will not permit herself to consider a courtship seriously until she knows Cesario is worthy of her rank. Malvolio is literally outclassed, and his ambitions are doomed to come to nothing.

Maria takes her revenge by writing a letter to Malvolio that apes Olivia’s handwriting and causes Malvolio to think Olivia is in love with him. The letter urges Malvolio to arrive before Olivia wearing cross-gartered yellow stockings, which (Maria reveals) are a “color she abhors” and a “fashion she detests.” Malvolio falls for it, and the resultant scene causes Olivia to think he’s gone crazy. She orders Maria that Malvolio “be looked to.”

Malvolio is. Maria, Olivia’s alcoholic uncle Sir Toby Belch, the fool Feste, and another servant named Fabian lock Malvolio in a cell and tell him he really _is_ crazy. Malvolio protests otherwise until he is finally delivered and the ruse is revealed. In the meantime, Olivia has accidentally married Viola’s twin Sebastian, and Viola herself accepts a proposal of marriage from Orsino.

And they all lived happily ever after.

Just kidding! Malvolio is released from his prison cell, but his torment continues as he is humiliated before the assembled company, appearing disheveled in his absurd stockings while Olivia tells him he has been tricked. Malvolio appears to have no intention of taking this lying down, and exits the play after swearing, “I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you.” Afterward, a disapproving Olivia says “he hath been most notoriously abused,” unknowingly echoing a phrase Malvolio himself used earlier in his prison cell while pleading for release.

In short, Malvolio is tortured. Audiences love it. The Elizabethans had a broader view of socially acceptable cruelty than we do, but Malvolio’s “gulling” is still described as one of the high points of the play, more compelling than the aristocratic drama. Back in 1602, John Manningham praised the “good practice” performed on Malvolio while ignoring the love triangle completely.

And yet, for all that he lived during the age of bear-baiting and the stocks, Manningham does not _entirely_ seem to have approved of Malvolio’s torture. In his diary, after applauding the “good practice,” Manningham writes, _"Quae mala cum multis patimur laeviora putantur"_ : “Those evils we suffer in the presence of many appear still more foolish.” A moment of compassion, perhaps, for a character who might be insufferable but did not deserve imprisonment for it. After all, should that be the case, we’d all end up in jail now and again.

In the play, Malvolio embodies Shakespeare’s condemnation of Puritanism, the perils of social climbing, the tangled relationships of desire and repression, and the consequences of hypocrisy. In the midst of all this, he somehow elicits our sympathy. Though the hijinks of Viola et al. entertain, Malvolio seems to have interested Shakespeare more, and he becomes the character through whom Shakespeare most closely interrogates his own society. Ever since Manningham, no review of a production is complete without special attention paid to the part. _Twelfth Night_ is, arguably, Malvolio’s play.

Now, thanks to the National Theatre, it is Malvolia’s.

 

_“How dost thou, woman--what is the matter with thee?”_

In 2017, National Theatre director Simon Godwin decided to portray Malvolio as a woman, cast Tamsin Greig in the role, and re-christened the character “Malvolia.” In doing so, he created one of the few truly original retellings of a Shakespearean play. You can put [ Richard III in a Nazi uniform](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_III_\(1995_film\)), you can have [ Claudius in gold braid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamlet_\(1996_film\)), but they remain the same villains. The same men, driven by the same lust for power and conquest.

Malvolia is not the same villain, largely because she is not the same man. Godwin does us all a service by not simply casting a female actor and having her play the male role. He changes the name _and_ the pronouns--up to and including in Malvolia’s fantasy scene, when she informs us that “the lady of the Strachy married the _mistress_ of the wardrobe,” rather than the yeoman. I have read reviews by (mostly male) critics claiming that Malvolia’s “sex change” doesn’t really matter, which is the surest sign that it does. Otherwise, why bother with changing the pronouns at all? And why comment extensively on a non-issue? (I’m tempted to quote “the lady doth protest too much” here, but I’d be getting ahead of myself.) As the root of this anxiety, Malvolia’s womanhood is essential to the reimagining of her character and its significance, because it forces the audience to reorient itself before she even speaks her first line.

In fact, Malvolia inhabits a world of women. In abjuring the company of men, Olivia has fired all of them. In the NT production, Fabian becomes Fabia, and Olivia’s professional fool, Feste, is likewise female. Olivia’s personal servants are all gentlewomen. The only flies in the ointment are Sir Toby (whom presumably Olivia keeps around out of familial obligation) and his idiot friend Sir Andrew Aguecheek, who has his own hopes of marrying Olivia.

As the steward of Olivia’s household, Malvolia commands this female army like a dour Antiope in culottes and sensible shoes. Abrasive and unpleasant, she doesn’t mind bossing people around. Her authority makes her arrogant, and she has a gift for making enemies both of her social betters, such as Sir Toby, and chaos agents like Feste. She’s allergic to good times--when she interrupts Sir Toby’s party in Act 2, she turns off the stereo, points at a lone bottle of beer, and claims that the revelers have made “an ale-house of [her] lady’s house.” When Viola shows up with a guitar to serenade Olivia, Malvolia rolls her eyes so hard it appears physically painful. If music be the food of love, then for God’s sake, turn it off.

And yet Greig’s Malvolia craves love and connection. Lacking a single friend or ally, she reaches out to the audience from the very beginning: chastising us, conspiring with us, bonding with us. She sneers at us for laughing at Feste’s antics. She begs us for help in deciphering “Olivia’s” letter even as she orders us not to laugh at the dirty puns therein. When she believes herself victorious in winning Olivia’s heart, she invites us to celebrate with her. And in the play’s finale, she numbers us among her betrayers. Why didn’t we warn her?

But even when she trusts us, we provide a poor substitute for what Malvolia really wants: Olivia’s love. Male Malvolios are generally portrayed as social climbers, with emphasis placed on their interest in material luxury and the freedom to look down their noses at their betters. Affection might or might not play into their desire for Olivia’s hand.

However, in the NT production, Godwin includes an extraordinary scene in which Malvolia crouches over Olivia’s bed in what Viola coins “the dead of night,” holding a teacup in one hand and reaching out yearningly for her mistress with the other. She blossoms under any sign of attention Olivia pays her; even when Olivia tells her she is “sick of self-love,” she wears a proud little “thanks for noticing!” smile. Moments later, Olivia hands her a flower given to her by Feste. Though Olivia’s plainly thinking of the flower as garbage to be disposed of, Malvolia takes it as if it’s a romantic token, with a shine in her eyes and a catch in her breath. She is a woman in love.

Moreover, she is a lesbian. That might seem like an obvious statement, but _Twelfth Night_ is possibly the queerest play in Shakespeare. And in it, queer desires are largely amorphous, ambiguous. Olivia is in love with another woman, but she believes her to be a man; likewise, in many productions, the lovestruck Orsino seems to fight an additional attraction to “Cesario.” Sebastian, who ultimately marries Olivia, “both day and night kept company” with Antonio.

Malvolia’s desire is unambiguous. Like Olivia, she has turned her back on the male sex entirely. When Olivia inquires “what kind of man” Cesario is, Malvolia says, with a disgusted shudder: “Of… _man_ kind.” Later, when sent in pursuit of Cesario to deliver Olivia’s ring, Malvolia catches “him” by the guitar strap and wipes her hand off afterward. Boys have cooties. If Olivia became Oliver, Malvolia would no longer be interested. Unlike Orsino, Olivia, and Sebastian, Malvolia knows exactly what--and who--she wants. It is this certainty that brings about her downfall and, later, her resurrection.

When _Twelfth Night_ belongs to Malvolio, turning him into a self-aware, self-loving lesbian is an extraordinary act.

In fact, in the NT’s production, Malvolia’s lesbianism becomes part of the reason (though not the entire reason) why the letter plot is devised in the first place. In reaching out to Olivia at night, Malvolia is interrupted by the music from Sir Toby’s rager. Furious, she storms out of Olivia’s room and upbraids the partygoers for doing the very thing she’d intended to do herself: disturbing her lady’s rest. Her frustration is palpable, and moments later, is made only worse by the female Feste rubbing up suggestively against her. “Ginger shall be hot in the mouth,” Feste breathes. Malvolia immediately fists her hands at her sides while her eyelashes flutter.

Sir Toby tries to take her down a peg, asking her, “Art any more than a steward?” She holds herself perfectly still as he invades her personal space and mocks her for being “virtuous”--a word that, when applied to a woman like Malvolia, carries the unmistakable connotation of virginity. Sir Toby is making fun of her for being an old maid.

And, quivering with sexual frustration, Malvolia does something inexcusable that seals her fate: she blames Maria for the whole mess, grabs her by the hair, and hisses in her ear that Olivia shall know about the party “by this hand”--a hand that never finished its reach toward Olivia moments before. She holds on just long enough to make the audience wonder if she really wants to let go. She probably doesn’t; she needs badly to touch a woman. This need manifests itself in aggression that I will not attempt to justify.

It also terrifies Maria. She gulps, goes pale, freezes in place, and when Malvolia leaves, cries out in rage: “Go shake your ears!” This is a departure from any other _Twelfth Night_ production that I have ever seen (five total, including this one), in which Maria is offended at the implication she doesn’t know how to do her job. The letter plot is born out of mischief, not a desire to destroy someone. Here, Godwin depicts it as pure gay panic.

“This sounds kind of bad,” you might be saying right about now. “In the year of our lord twentygayteen, why would I want to watch a woman get punished for being a lesbian? Haven’t we seen that a million times before?”

You haven’t seen this.

 

_“I know a hawk from a handsaw.”_

Certainly, nobody has seen the famous yellow stockings scene done in such a way. Malvolio’s prancing before Olivia in absurd dress is one of the play’s greatest pleasures, and (depending on how the party scene is played) can seem a fitting recompense for his unjust treatment of Maria. For the uptight Malvolio, putting on bright yellow stockings is a departure enough from his norm, and relatively harmless in that it does not sexualize or expose him.

For a woman, that’s not quite true. Yellow would indeed be a fashion departure for Malvolia, but there’s something less startling about a woman in yellow tights. Women wear tights. Sometimes we wear yellow ones. It’d be funny, but not a shock to the system--not a reason for the audience to reconsider everything we know about Malvolia, and for Olivia to think she’s gone mad.

So the Godwin production dials it up to eleven and breaks off the knob. Tamsin Greig gives an amazing performance that I can’t possibly do justice to, except to say: dem arms. What? I can be shallow.

Her Malvolia appears at the top of the stairs in a Pierrot jacket and strips it off to reveal an extraordinary burlesque outfit beneath. It must be seen to be believed, so here you go:

 

 

Wow.

I’d like to point out here that Malvolia the prig apparently had this costume ready to go. She knows how to dance and run around in high heels. She wears expertly applied makeup. She’s a femme who’s literally kept it in the closet, and who apparently practices these arts in secret. How else would she know how to do all this? This scene isn’t just a jaw-dropping exhibition of the worst fashion has to offer, but a revealing insight into exactly how repressed Malvolia is, and how desperately she’s been longing to kick over the traces. In interviews, Tamsin Greig describes her as “controlled and afraid”: when she believes that Olivia loves her, Malvolia’s fear disappears, and she embraces what she’s denied herself for so long. She becomes, for all intents and purposes, a new woman.

And because it happens for no apparent reason, and in the blink of an eye, Olivia thinks she’s lost her mind. No wonder, since her thoughts tend that way already: before Malvolia even appears on the scene, after Maria says Malvolia’s acting unusually, Olivia says, “I am as mad as she.” Like Malvolia, Olivia has turned herself inside-out. Like Malvolia, she will put aside the sober black garments that have defined her, put aside her dignity, put aside her self-imposed isolation--all for love of another woman. Maybe their social classes can never meet, but Godwin’s production makes Malvolia and Olivia two of a kind.

However, Olivia’s not in a position to know that yet, much less acknowledge it. Therefore, the “mad” Malvolia is turned over to Sir Toby’s tender mercies, and she ends up in a cell.

Let me be clear: what follows is excruciating to watch. Regardless of context or interpretation, there’s no way to get around the fact that it’s a scene of a lesbian being tied up, blindfolded, and gaslighted. I can’t blame anybody for wanting to avoid it, should it be a trigger or anything else. I just want to throw that out there right away.

For me _personally,_ however, the scene transcends the narrative of the tortured queer. That narrative generally relies upon a queer person not only getting tortured, but being broken, often killed. If they live, they learn their lesson and are suitably neutered.

The National Theatre production subverts that narrative. After all, it’s working with a character who has adamantly insisted on his own sanity for hundreds of years. This--the rescripting of such a character as a lesbian--is another reason why making Malvolio into Malvolia is revelatory.

Malvolio’s insistence on his sanity reads as: “Come _on,_ you jerks, are you _kidding_ me?” Malvolia’s insistence on same carries a very different weight. It wasn’t long ago at all that homosexuality was listed as a mental disorder in the DSM--in fact, “sexual orientation disturbance” remained on the books until 1987. When her existence was acknowledged at all, the lesbian was an unnatural creature who forewent her role as the partner to a man, and jeez, _something_ had to be wrong with her if she wanted to do that. We were told, again and again, that something was wrong with our brains, that we were out of touch with the natural order of things, with reality itself. We were told we could be cured by religion.

Malvolia is told all these things too, and she is having none of it.

In the cell, Feste dresses up as Sir Topas, the curate, and goes so far as to grope Malvolia’s breasts, which becomes all the more horrific when you remember a) Malvolia thinks she is being touched by a man and b) she hates men. Feste-as-priest orders Malvolia to say that she is in a room full of light, and then to abjure her religious beliefs, if she wants to be set free. In the background, Maria and Toby snicker.

If it ended there, or if Malvolia agreed to the terms, I would have been sickened, probably enough to close Youtube and pour myself an outsized glass of wine. But it doesn’t end there--Malvolia insists she is “as well in [her] wits as anyone in Illyria” (though, given what we’ve seen of Illyria, this is a pretty low bar), and Greig changes the game by changing the punctuation.

 

 

> **Malvolio:** I am not mad, Sir Topas: I say to you, this house is dark.
> 
> **Malvolia:** I am not mad! Sir Topas, I say to you this house is dark!

This delivery re-focuses the line on Malvolia’s certainty and self-defense, rather than her appeal to Sir Topas’s mercy. Her vigorous insistence that she knows where and who she is, that she is sane in the midst of darkness (and that she refuses to conjure a light where none exists), takes on a whole new resonance when it’s a lesbian character. In fact, this emphasis on her sanity causes me to make connections I would never have considered before: specifically, it thematically and rhetorically ties Malvolia to the top of the Shakespearean pantheon.

  
Earlier, I mentioned _Hamlet._ I was only partly tongue-in-cheek. If anybody knows anything about _Hamlet,_ they know the age-old question: is Hamlet insane or not?

 

 

> **Hamlet** [to Horatio]: How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself,  
>  As I perchance hereafter shall think meet  
>  To put an antic disposition on,  
>  That you, at such times seeing me, never shall,  
>  With arms encumber'd thus, or this headshake,  
>  Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,  
>  As 'Well, well, we know,' or 'We could, an if we would,'  
>  Or 'If we list to speak,' or 'There be, an if they might,'  
>  Or such ambiguous giving out, to note  
>  That you know aught of me...

 

In other words, Hamlet tells his bosom buddy that no matter what it looks like, he is not mad.

Critics and audiences have never been satisfied with this as the final answer. _Does_ Hamlet merely imitate madness? Does he lose his mind partway through the play and go from pretense to reality? What the hell does sanity mean, anyway?

In _Twelfth Night,_ following on _Hamlet’_ s heels by a year or so:

 

 

> **Feste:** I will help you to [the light and paper you request]. But tell me true, are you not mad indeed? Or do you but counterfeit?

 

Feste’s phrasing leaves open the question of whether or not she is asking Malvolia: Do you pretend to be mad? Or do you pretend to be sane?

Malvolia’s vehement reply is that she _pretends_ nothing, that she _seems_ to be nothing other than what she is: someone “notoriously abused.” She’s no Hamlet, who pretends to everything, who dithers about revenge in the face of mounting evidence that Claudius murdered his father, who even asks if life is worth living. In fact, screw that.

 

 

> **Hamlet:** To be, or not to be: that is the question...
> 
> **Malvolia** [to Feste]: I will live _to be_ thankful to thee.

 

In the midst of her torture, Malvolia insists on her own survival, that her tormentors are in the wrong and don’t get to tell her what her story is. They won’t get to tell other people about it either, if she has her way. She wants “some light and some paper” so she can pen a letter to her lady, plead her case, and demand her release as someone who is “madly-used,” not mad indeed.

I don’t think it’s much of a coincidence that _Hamlet_ and _Twelfth Night_ explore themes of sanity and imprisonment (Hamlet is very much a prisoner in a Bentham-esque nightmare, “the observed of all observers”) when they were written so closely to each other. In being framed by the question of lunacy, Hamlet and Malvolio/-a stand side by side.

Am I daring to call Malvolio (of all people) equal to Hamlet (of all people) as a character? No. Am I calling Malvoli _a_ that? Hell, yes.

In the beginning, she is as secret as he, her true identity hidden from everyone: like Hamlet, Greig’s Malvolia wears black, as she also has “that within which passeth show.” No trespassers allowed. She’s a gloomy gus, the enemy of joy, much like Hamlet, who refuses to celebrate his mother’s hasty marriage to his uncle. Her ability to love whom she wishes is hindered by her rank; Hamlet cannot choose his own bride “as unvalued persons do.” And most of all like Hamlet, Malvolia’s truest self--her deepest desires, her secrets, her worldview--emerges in soliloquy.

 

 

> **Hamlet:** Now I am alone.  
>  O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!  
>  Is it not monstrous that this player here,  
>  But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,  
>  Could force his soul so to his own conceit  
>  That from her working all his visage wann'd,  
>  Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,  
>  A broken voice, and his whole function suiting  
>  With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!
> 
>  
> 
> **Malvolia:** 'Tis but fortune; all is fortune. Maria once told  
>  me [Olivia] did affect me: and I have heard herself come  
>  thus near, that, should she fancy, it should be one  
>  of my complexion. Besides, she uses me with a more  
>  exalted respect than any one else that follows her.  
>  What should I think on't?

 

Alone, Hamlet castigates himself for not taking action when it is within his reach. Malvolia, by contrast, bemoans how it is _impossible_ for her to take action, i.e., to marry the woman she loves. While Hamlet continues berating himself, Malvolia evokes an image of the life she would have, rhetorically producing a future rather than tearing one down. Hamlet gets proof after proof of Claudius’s guilt and hesitates to kill him; when given a letter “from Olivia” proclaiming her love, Malvolia moves immediately to seize the golden opportunity.

All of this is, of course, in Shakespeare’s original text. But Shakespeare’s original text was meant for a paragon of self-important male entitlement, not a queer woman who’s willing to throw caution to the wind for the chance to be loved by the one she adores. Her dramatic presence and power thereby increase by an order of magnitude.

Love him or hate him (he’s not my favorite), Hamlet remains remarkable for his rich interiority, even centuries later. At the time of Shakespeare’s writing, there hadn’t been anything quite like him: a character who could be seen and heard, but not known. A lesbian Malvolia slots into the same category. Like Hamlet, she addresses the audience at the same time she insists we cannot understand her. She wags her finger and shushes us, shows us her joy but keeps us separate, and--above all else--holds on to her biggest secret, even at the moment of her greatest happiness on the stairs, when it _seems_ that all has been revealed.   

All has not. Malvolia’s greatest happiness doesn’t last. Her greatest triumph, however, is yet to come.

 

_ “You must not now deny it is your hand.” _

No discussion of this triumph, of Malvolia’s final scene, would be complete without first remarking on how her lesbianism destabilizes the play’s ending, especially her dynamic with Olivia.

In Olivia, the National Theatre makes another departure from many other productions of _Twelfth Night._ When Olivia discovers “Cesario” has a twin brother, whom she has married by mistake, she cries: “Most wonderful!”

In Shakespeare’s original usage, this would have meant “This is so weird!” In our usage, of course, it sounds like “This is awesome!” Modern productions often go with the latter, with Olivia exclaiming in delight that there are now _two_ people who look like her beloved, and the more the merrier, right? After all, this is a comedy. The audience wants Olivia to be happy so we can go home happy, too.

The NT production explores more seriously the question of what it would be like to learn you have married a complete stranger instead of the person you love. When she realizes her mistake, Olivia says in a deadened tone: “Most wonderful.” She doesn’t have what she wants, and she never will. She wanted Cesario, but Cesario is Viola, and Viola will marry Orsino. In the meantime, Olivia has tied herself for eternity to a man she does not know, and she spends the rest of the scene standing apart from Sebastian. She doesn’t want to touch him. When they chance to make eye contact, she gives him a forced smile.

She’s in Malvolia’s boat now, loving another woman who doesn’t love her. When Malvolia arrives on stage, her makeup streaked and her costume smudged, Olivia is the only one to extend her any kind of compassion. After learning about the letter trick, her face twists, and she cries: “Alas, poor fool, how have they baffled thee!” She is clearly talking to herself, too. Malvolia has become her mirror, and for a moment, they exchange a look of mutual recognition.

Perhaps this gives Malvolia the courage to do what she does next. She reaches up, touches her hair, and pulls it off in one tug, revealing a head of short blonde hair beneath. She’s been wearing a wig the whole time: the most dramatic aspect of her disguise. We had no idea. As with Hamlet, for all her soliloquizing, we did not know her--what she had “within” passed “show.” Until now.

She doesn’t have to do this. Olivia makes it plain that she deserves justice: “Thou shalt be both the plaintiff and the judge of thine own cause.” Malvolia could keep the wig on and remain in the house as Olivia’s steward, humbled but with her position intact. In fact, she could be the one character able to return to the status quo and re-occupy the position she had at the start of the play. It would be the safer bet.

But the bravery that led Malvolia to pursue Olivia also allows her to escape the environs that stifled her, and where she can no longer be content to serve. When she removes the wig, she ceases to cower. Her spine straightens, her shoulders go back, she lifts her chin, and she casts a baleful gaze on her so-called betters. She then extends it to the audience. She says, in a flat voice that seems to belong to a new woman: “I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you.”

Then she departs of her own accord, turning her back on the heteronormative “order” that has been “restored” (willingly by Viola/Orsino, mistakenly by Olivia/Sebastian). Olivia is trapped in a marriage to a man, but Malvolia frees herself from the whole sorry mess.

“But this is in Shakespeare’s script!” you say. “Of course she leaves.”

Not necessarily. In other productions I have seen, Malvolio returns to the stage at the very end, usually to join in a scene of singing and dancing with the other characters. They pat his arm, give him apologetic looks, and take his hand. He allows it. As I said before, this is a comedy. We want to walk away feeling that all is well. This doesn’t always happen, but it makes room for the possibility of a “happy” ending for a Malvolio who _does_ return to the status quo (one of comedy’s defining features).

Malvolia isn’t having any of this, either. As the stage revolves during Feste’s final song, Malvolia sits alone on the stairs, raising her face to the sky. This echoes the fountain scene when she raised her head and announced, “I will be proud”--“pride,” of course, being another word with a different connotation when tied to a queer character. In another echo of that scene, rain begins to fall. Godwin says the rain is meant to be a sign of renewal and growth for Malvolia--something nourishing that brings her out of her burial plot in the ground. I read it the same way.

As a lesbian, I don’t see myself in Malvolia’s torment, nor do I find her torment to be the defining aspect of her role in the play. Rather, Malvolia is proof that the play can belong to us; that we deserve special mention in the reviews; that we own our truth; that our story need not end with our destruction or erasure. Malvolia ends the play humiliated, but unbroken. She reaches up to the sky with the same fluttering fingers she used when imagining herself in bed with Olivia--“Fortune’s fingers”--indicating she will not give up on her desires.

The rest of the characters gather at the foot of the stairs, holding umbrellas that shield them from the rain. They remain down on the ground, beneath Malvolia, and refuse the possibility of growth. Malvolia climbs the stairs with increasing strength and leaves them all behind, reaching out to the rain they’re hiding from. She extends her hands. The lights go down. The music stops. The rest is silence.

Except for our applause.

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't seen this production yet and I have piqued your interest, you can watch it on YouTube.
> 
> First part is [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03_FGzUAtro&feature=youtu.be&t=18m) (timestamped to skip the front matter and begin when the play does).
> 
> Second part is [here.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiuGqNYnIE8&feature=youtu.be)
> 
> I could talk about this play forever and would love to hear what you think, or try my best to answer any questions you might have about it. I also hope you enjoyed the meta. Please feel free to comment!


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